By Kamakshi Tandon
"Typical," went the reaction to Nikolay Davydenko and Novak Djokovic's recent retirements against Roger Federer. But were they? We took the raw data and used it to draw some rough conclusions.
Click here for a calculation of where the top men and women stood in this category 14 months ago. (Note: criteria varies slightly)
Roger Federer’s aura of invincibility may have been fading fast, but over the past week and a half he’s quite literally recovered some of it by default. Three times he's faced his nearest challengers in the rankings, and twice they've handed him victory.
First came Nikolay Davydenko, who quit with a leg injury in the Estoril final. He had lost the first set in a tiebreak and was up a break in the second set. Then in Monte Carlo last week, Novak Djokovic stopped after going down a set and a break to Federer in the semifinals.
The retirements attracted particular attention for two reasons. One was timing: neither involved a mid-match injury that made carrying on impossible. Davydenko still looked competitive in the match, while Djokovic was just a few games away from losing and seemed capable of playing till the end.
Here's how often the top 10 have retired during a match, compared to the amount of matches they've lost during their career. The total number of retirements is given in brackets.
*ATP main draw, Grand Slam and Davis Cup matches only.
The other was the players involved. Both Davydenko and Djokovic have acquired a reputation for dubious defaults in precisely such situations. “I have a little injury and I can't finish the match,” Davydenko told the Estoril crowd, later assuring reporters that he would be ready to play at Monte Carlo in three days’ time.
Djokovic, who received a few boos from the crowd as he left the court on Saturday, made his problem sound even more tepid. “It’s a sore throat. I feel dizziness a little bit in the last three days,” he said afterwards. “I asked the doctor yesterday but he said I don't have nothing, which I really don't believe. I think he didn't give me the right diagnosis, obviously.“But obviously when you're playing against the No. 1 player of the world, you get a lot of balls back and longer points, and I just couldn't get enough energy back after each point... the previous opponents were not that tough and I didn't have long rallies against the previous opponents like I had today.”
So were their actions typical? Yes and no. They've done it before, but it's hardly something they do all the time. They just do it a little more often than most, and a little more dramatically to boot.
The numbers show that Djokovic tends to retire more often than any other top-10 player, but just as significant is the fact that he chooses memorable occasions to do so. Three of his five retirements have come against either Federer or Nadal in the semifinals of big events. Those are also the only times he’s retired facing a big deficit in a match, suggesting he doesn’t want to give his biggest rivals a clean win when he’s unfit.
Most notorious is Djokovic’s French Open meeting with Nadal two years ago, when he pulled the plug after losing the first two sets but declared he felt he had been “in control” of the match. His retirement against the Spaniard at rain-hit Wimbledon last year was more understandable, given that he had played nine hours in the previous two days to defeat Lleyton Hewitt in four sets and Marcos Baghdatis in five. His other two retirements were attributed to the breathing difficulties that plagued him early on and were eventually fixed with corrective surgery.
Here's how often the top 10 have retired while significantly behind in a match, compared to the amount of matches they've lost during their career. The number of retirements while trailing is given in brackets.
*ATP main draw, Grand Slam and Davis Cup matches only.
At other times, however, Djokovic has shown he’s willing to fight through physical problems, starting with a cult match against Gael Monfils at the 2005 US Open when he huffed and puffed his way to victory in five dramatic sets. A gasping Djokovic called numerous injury timeouts during the match, including one during the late stages that delayed Monfils’ service game. Monfils later admitted he had gone cold during the break.
That match also established another damaging perception that clings to the Serb – a habit of calling the trainer during tough contests. “I think he’s a joke, you know, when it comes down to his injuries. The rules are there to be used, not abused,” said Federer after a Davis Cup match in 2006.
Along with James Blake, Federer is the only member of the top ten never to have retired during a match.
Richard Gasquet comes out second on both lists, which only adds to the hits he’s taken for showing a lack of toughness. Accusing of ducking a Davis Cup match with Andy Roddick a couple of weeks ago, he could instead do with the kind of performance he produced against Roddick at Wimbledon last year, coming from two sets and a break down to win their quarterfinal match.
Davydenko stands out for the sheer number of times he’s abandoned a contest, but his marathon schedule means he also plays (and loses) the most matches. He owns the most infamous retirement in men’s tennis, a 6-2, 3-6, 1-2 defeat in the second round of Sopot that made headlines when betting exchange Betfair voided all wagers on the match because of strange betting patterns. Happily for his sporting reputation but intriguingly for match-fixing theorists, a number of Davydenko’s main draw retirements have come when he was even or leading in the match.
Clearly something had to give when Djokovic and Davydenko met in a Davis Cup match earlier this month. And so it proved: Djokovic retired up two sets to one at 4-6, 3-6, 6-4, 0-0.But while they’re high on the list of top-ten players, both fall short of some perennial offenders like Tommy Haas and Juan Martin del Potro, who have repeated retired a game or two away from losing a match. It’s tough to condemn either one too heartily given how many injuries they’ve had to content with, but still, reaching the finish line is clearly not one of their priorities.
Haas takes the cake for once retiring down 6-4, 5-0 to Andrei Pavel in Montreal because of a back injury which flared up during the first set. But it’s just as tricky not to start a match as it is to not finish it: he’s also taken flak for giving Federer walkovers in their past two meetings.
In del Potro’s case, a staggering one-fifth of his 40 career defeats have been unfinished matches, including perhaps the second-most famous retirement in men’s tennis - a 6-1, 3-1 loss to James Blake whose side-effects ended ATP’s experiment with round-robin events. The Argentine was earmarked as a future top-ten player before his physical frailties became obvious - if he ever does get there, he may end up making Djokovic look indefatigable.
from tennis.com
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Djoker, you're such a Joker indeed. Or a Choker. Both apply.
OTOH, Fed has NEVER retired from a match. (And Blake, credit to you, too.) All 701 matches Fed's had in his career, he's played them to both the W and the L.
That says it all about who truly deserves to be #1.
-tmsh-
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